First go with the Lee Load-All II

[neutron619]

Well chaps, I've just been out in the garage trying to work out how it all goes together and I've loaded my first 16 gauge shells.

 

I checked the powder bushings against the scale and picked the one that was nearest to the recipe. It was very slightly over, but only by a couple of tenths of a grain and the recipe shows the pressure is well down below the 680 bar limit for 16 gauge, so I think I'll be ok.

 

In terms of wads, I tried following the recipe to the letter to start with. It required a 3mm nitro card and 18mm of fibre wad on top. I've got 20mm wads, so I cut a bit off the end of the first one, but the crimp was poor, so I tried a 19mm wad too.The following are the results:

 

 

Looking at the way the crimp collapsed into the case, I guessed that the column height wasn't quite high enough, so I tried the 20mm wad without cutting them. The following are the results:

 

 

I played around a bit with the pressure I applied to the crimp starter and finisher stages, but I think these might be quite good. The first one is a bit swirled, but by the 3rd or 4th attempt I think I'd got the hang of it. I do have to push the lever down relatively hard to finish the crimp, but it is properly closed and seems even, with a little bit of a rim. Not as much height to the rim as a factory shell, maybe, but I think they're ok.

 

Would the resident experts like to comment, remembering that this is my first attempt ever?

 

Thanks for any advice in advance,

 

Adam.

 

Edit: Also - if anyone wants to tell me which of these shells they think I should fire and which I should deconstruct, I'd appreciate hearing it...

Edited December 18, 2015 by neutron619

[sitsinhedges]

Shoot them all The last ones look best but they will all do the business. Hope you enjoy this aspect of shooting

[neutron619]

Shoot them all The last ones look best but they will all do the business. Hope you enjoy this aspect of shooting

 

Thanks for the guidance and I do very much already. I'll take them out on Sunday and see if they can account for anything.

 

I reload for CF as well, but I don't shoot anywhere like as many deer as I do pigeons, so I have a feeling the shotgun side of things is going to be even more enjoyable than tinkering about with metallic cartridges. I suspect my "only one cartridge per gun" thing may be about to go out of the window for a while...

[Cyrus1988]

They look very good, I know for 12 bore we use a 1 cent (euro) coin on the final crimp stage to get the required depth, not sure what you'd use for 16, maybe a small washer? Are these brand new cases?

[neutron619]

Thanks :-)

 

I could find a small washer I'm sure, though I don't have a lot more wiggle room left to get the crimp deeper - perhaps that's something I should be concerned about? The case is packed pretty full, but as you saw above, the 19mm wad made the crimp collapse inward... Perhaps I just need to push the crimp finisher down harder?

 

These are brand new cases, yes.

[Lord Geordie]

You can normally get away with once fired shells, trick is to load the nitro card in manually! The wads go through the wad guide fine! But the nitro card tends to tear the folds, I loaded both plaswad and fibre through the LEE with once fires hulls and they crimp spot on! Infact due to them retaining memory they crimp a lot easier! Choose a stiff hull wall as the softer ones tend to get malformed easily when crimping! Remember! If the hull is overfilled, you run the risk of it bulging at the base! This can lead to feed issues as they wont go into the chamber! The second batch look spot on to me If your crimp falls through like batch one, dep on how bad they collapse inward, you may loose shot through the hole! Just be aware!

[Underdog]

Plas wads give more allowing the final crimping to be better.

Stiffer fibre wads are more difficult.

Don't be frightened to put some load on.

It won't be dangerous.

 

A little washer will help as said.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Bring them up on Sunday and we can test them!

[Guest cookoff013]

That's why I use the mec and the long crimp punch. Good deep even crimps.

They are as good as factory, a quick buzz and they look Stella!.

 

European hulls need filling, often with larger wads. And I still get the deep crimp.

[MAB1954]

Glad to see you have got started, the second batch look ok to me. Never used a Lee so have no advice on crimp set up but the washer ideal sounds like its worked for others. I have a couple of MEC's bit of a fiddle to get set but then make good cartridges. Let us know how your 12 gauge load goes.

[neutron619]

Well here are the 12 gauge shells. Just a handful to test out tomorrow morning.

 

 

The Lee press made this a more difficult load unfortunately. There is no 1 3/8oz bushing with the Load-All II which would have been the right one for 38 or 39 grams, so I weighed all the charges using the balance, by hand. I'll have to come up with some kind of bushing to use with the press if this one works out. Likewise, there was no powder bushing which would load 1.75g of powder reliably, but the 198 bushing dropped 1.80g very consistently, so I adjusted the load to work with that powder charge.

 

I was quite pleased with myself loading this one though - I spotted, before I crimped the first round that the shot column was going to be too short, so chucked in a filler card and they seem to have closed pretty nicely, albeit perhaps not as well as the 16ga ones.

 

In the end, I loaded:

 

12ga / 70 / CX2000 / 1.80g Vectan A0 / 3mm Nitro + 16mm Fibre + 2mm Cork / 38g Lead #5 / 6pt

 

This is still slightly less hot that the Nobel listed maximums (which have 40g of shot and plastic wads at 700 bar), so I'm banking on the pressures being ok. I'll see how they pattern tomorrow.

 

Thanks again to everyone who's responded to my threads in the past few days for your help with these loads. I'm going to get out and pattern test them tomorrow and if they seem even and consistent, I'll load some more.

[Cyrus1988]

You can cut a strip of cartridge and use it as a kind of shim inside the bushing to get the exact volume you need. It's a bit of carry on initially but once you got the right size you're sorted.

 

And, if you get hold of one of those GAEP spinners the 12's will look spot on.

Edited December 20, 2015 by Cyrus1988

[neutron619]

You can cut a strip of cartridge and use it as a kind of shim inside the bushing to get the exact volume you need. It's a bit of carry on initially but once you got the right size you're sorted.

 

And, if you get hold of one of this GAEP spinners the 12's will look spot on.

 

Thank you for the tips. In fact, I did have a quick go with a bit of an old 16 gauge cartridge and the 1½oz bushing, but I haven't yet come up with a final solution. I'm sure I'll get there. I did see one chap here had tapped out holes in a second set of bushings so as to put an adjustable bolt through them - I thought that was quite a good idea, but buying all the kit / components for two gauges has wiped me out for the moment, so your plan gets the go ahead when I can get round to it, me thinks.

 

Again - a GAEP spinner is on the list of "nice to haves" - I'll see what Santa brings and then maybe get one in the new year if it's paper gifts rather than boxes to unwrap...

[hakapiken]

 

 

And, if you get hold of one of this GAEP spinners the 12's will look spot on.

 

A GAEP BN 2 will make your loads look lika new from the factory

 

J.A.

[Uncle Albert]

Problems with running out of bushes for the Lee was the main reason I upgraded to the MEC with the Universal Charge Bar. The carts look good and they will shoot well as long as the recipe has not been exceeded. A most enjoyable part of our hobby is reloading.

[MAB1954]

Those loads look OK. Well done.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Well the 16 Bore load was a beauty, but the 12 Bore needs a little judicious tuning!

 

 

 

 

Now looking for more members of the Cambridgeshire Cardboard Perforating Society.

[Guest cookoff013]

Well the 16 Bore load was a beauty, but the 12 Bore needs a little judicious tuning!

 

 

 

 

Now looking for more members of the Cambridgeshire Cardboard Perforating Society.

Hmmm,

I might have some mighty loafs soon if they pass proof.

42g subsonics

24g #steel2

36g lead

Fasteel 24g #2

3" 24g steel "not slow"

 

Cook

[neutron619]

Well chaps - here's the write-up of today's pattern testing with TIGHTCHOKE.

The 16 gauge load patterned well but slightly harsher recoil than I had hoped for. Since the charge thrown by the press was on average 0.3gr over, I'm going to investigate modifying the bushing to reduce the charge by 0.3gr to exactly the "book value" to see if that makes the load smoother (but hopefully still patterns as well). This should also slightly improve the crimp, given there'll be a touch more space in the cartridge. Otherwise though, I'm happy with this one. Pattern test results will follow, with images, when I've produced them.

The 12 gauge load was a bit strange. We both prepared ourselves before the first shot for the harsh recoil of a 38g cartridge, but it was a bit of an anti-climax. It was actually less punchy than the 16 gauge load, though some of that will be down to the 16ga being a lighter gun and some of it will be down to the powder of the 12 gauge load being much "slower" (I think).

However, the lack of kick was very puzzling. There's only so much one can do to mitigate the effects of Newton's Laws so there should have been more recoil if the load was even moderately fast. We thought initially that combustion gas might be getting past the wad and reducing the accelerative force: the semi is bored to .740". We tried the load through a tighter SxS but again it was very mild, compared to what we were expecting, so perhaps the wad and card were working properly. It's difficult to tell and without access to a chronograph, we could only guess.

(I'll carry on guessing then.)

The loads were soft enough that we weren't actually sure whether they were supersonic. I think they were, but probably only marginally. There was some variation in the recoil with a few of the later firings seeming punchier than the first few, but this was not - in my limited experience - a 38g load doing 1220fps (or more, given the reduction in shot from 40 to 38 grams), which is what we expected and what I was hoping for.

I'm wondering then whether the crimp, which seemed a bit shallow on these loads (i.e. more shallow than the 16ga load, prompting comments from others here), could do with being deeper / tighter? I suspect that the pressure of these loads was not high enough for proper combustion to occur, because there were quite a number of unburnt powder flakes in the actions and barrels of the two test guns. The patches / kitchen roll that I later cleaned then with came out as filthy as I have ever seen, suggesting lots of unburnt powder and carbon left over from combustion(?).

So - if I've understood the basics correctly, a shallow crimp opens more easily than a deep one and generates lower pressure. If I'm right about that, I wonder whether removing the cork filler and dropping the column height a millimetre or two, then forming a deeper crimp would do the trick? I'm planning to load another batch of test cartridges without the cork fillers to see.

The other thought I've had is that I loaded these to a near-maximum recipe for a plastic wad. Fibre wads are known to take a little more powder for equivalent-to-plastic performance, so perhaps an extra half a grain or grain of powder cautiously added would be the answer here? Obviously that's an option I'm not as keen to try given the risk involved. Testing will be done with a 3½"-chambered gun with a higher proof level so there is some margin for pressure over 740 bar before the gun becomes a grenade, but hearing about any other alternatives to improve this load would be very valuable. I'm sure it's possible to get what I want out of it - I just need to tweak it till I get there.

Other than that, I'll look to TIGHTCHOKE to tell me anything I've forgotten to mention and go and get started on the pattern counts. Update to follow.

With thanks in advance for any advice any of you experts can proffer,

Adam.

Edit: Correction to comment about being above charge. Thought I was 0.7gr over, actually turned out to be 0.3gr when I looked at my notes.​

Edited December 21, 2015 by neutron619

[sitsinhedges]

This is where proofing pays its way. I use A0 a lot in 20 gauge and it burns pretty clean even in my subsonic loads because there is enough powder to generate enough pressure there for the given shot charge. I think you have a fair bit of leeway for adjusting your loads given the gun you are firing them thru, even if the pressure was a bit high a few odd shells aren't going to blow your gun up but it's one of those things you have to make your own mind up on.

 

I just wasted 25 or so shells readjusting my Mec650 by 3mm so I can use all these 67mm shells that are popping up recently. Reloading is like that sometimes.

[neutron619]

Right chaps - the 16 gauge pattern test results are in and they're quite something.

 

Remembering that this is a gun nominally choked half and full, the patterns are really rather good.

 

The two full choke patterns we shot - one of which is below - when counted and extrapolated to 40 yards gave 202 and 210 pellets in the pattern, which are 74.8% and 77.8% patterns respectively. The former is what I'd call "extra full" and the latter "stupidly full" - but since that's what I was hoping for and then some, I'm a happy man.

 

The half choke pattern presents something of a problem really. That pattern, again counted and extrapolated, gave 195 pellets in the pattern which is a 72.2% pattern - also "full" and on the way to "extra full". It would have been nice if this barrel was actually a little looser - you know, to deal with those targets which are closer in than 400 yards - but I guess I'll learn to shoot it all the same.

 

Note that all of the above assumes that there are 270 pellets per ounce of #6. I suspect the average count per cartridge might be slightly lower than that, but I did count 268 in the test drop I did yesterday.

 

Anyway - progress.

 

Edit: typo.

Edited December 21, 2015 by neutron619

[neutron619]

I should have added, of course, that when I returned to my own permissions this afternoon, I managed to down a bird with my first shot using the new 16 gauge cartridge, which was a nice beginning.

 

Anyway - I look forward to any other wisdom that you chaps may offer regarding the under-performing 12 gauge load. I'm still new to this, so I won't have thought of all the possibilities, I expect.

[motty]

Extrapolated to 40 yards? Please explain.

[Underdog]

The 12g loads.... Put some more powder in and stop mithering you tight wad!

U. Lol.

[neutron619]

Extrapolated to 40 yards? Please explain.​

 

Simple. The standard pattern is a 30" circle at 40 yards.

 

Making the assumption that all pellets travel in a straight line once they leave the barrel of the gun (which they don't but it's near enough) then simple trigonometry shows that if you shoot your pattern plate at 30 yards, then counting the pellets within a 22½" circle will tell you what the 40 yard performance will be.

 

It's not perfect (drawing the circle around the central point rather than the point of aim also implicitly discounts gravity), but if you want to know the difference between 40%, 50%, 60% or 70% patterns, it's good enough.

Edited December 21, 2015 by neutron619